With all of the revaluations about the NSA (insert any number of articles) I thought it would be a good idea to touch on the benefits of using a VPN service. Now before you stop reading this article because “your not doing anything wrong so who cares if they are looking at your internet traffic” let me quickly explain several other cool uses for encrypting your traffic, and also tell you why you should care even that anyone is looking at your private data (even if you don’t break the law!)
Normal everyday uses for VPN:
-circumvent local sports blackouts and watch your favorite sports team online while saving tons of money on your cable bill.
-protect your laptop/smartphone/tablet while you are connected from a public hotspots
-stop online companies from capturing your web browsing trends and advertising to you + selling your likes/interests to data mining companies who in turn direct market to you (think spam snail mail)
-stop companies, and the government from spying on you!
There are tons of companies out there that offer solid VPN services. At the end of the day its kind of a crap shoot weather or not they really store you internet logs (companies in the US are very likely to be forced into compiling with the NASA to turn over logs/store info about users). For that reason my VPN company of choice is Viper VPN. They “own” all of their infrastructure, and they are based in Switzerland. Very far from the long arm of the US spy machine.
Setting up the VPN is about as easy as it gets. You download their local client for your machine (they cover all major operating systems including windows, android, IOS, and linux). From their you can set the program to start when windows boots up and your connection will forever be encrypted.
This is not a fool proof method, and yes if someone as powerful as the US government wants to reach your silly emails and texts they will figure out a way to do it. However that does not mean we should make it easier for our rights to be trampled on. It might sound silly, and like I am up on a soap box here but collectively as a society, we in the US are as “free” from government tyranny as any society in the history of the earth has ever been. There is a shift happening in the social consciousness of our country that it is “ok” to loose “some” of our rights in order to be better protected from terrorism. If we continue down the current path we are going to severely regress as a nation in terms of the freedom to live our lives, and we will loose all notion of privacy….. like the great MLK once said:
If I lived in China or Russia or any totalitarian country maybe I could understand the denial of certain basic 1’st amendment privileges because they haven’t committed themselves to that over there. But somewhere I read of the freedom of assembly. Somewhere I read of the freedom of speech. Somewhere I read of the freedom of press. SOMEWHERE I READ that the greatness of America is the right to protest for rights!
